Natalie Alvarez

In 2006, Natalie Alvarez joined the Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock where she teaches in the Theatre Praxis concentration. Her research interests include: performance theory; North American contemporary performance; performativity in simulations and reenactment culture; Latina/o-Canadian theatre and performance; genealogies of nostalgia and performance; as well as performance analysis and pedagogy. In 2010, she received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant for her manuscript project entitled Enactments of Difference: Simulations and Performance from Military Training to Dark Tourism. Part of this research was presented at a plenary panel at the 2009 conference for the American Society of Theatre Research (ASTR). She serves as Co-Editor for the Canadian Theatre Review’s Views and Reviews and has two forthcoming books with Playwrights Canada Press, an anthology of Latina/o-Canadian plays and a collection of critical essays on Latina/o-Canadian theatre and performance. Natalie also engages regularly in theatre practice. For DART’s 2008-2009 mainstage season, she directed a multi-media adaptation of Euripides’ Medea and in 2010 for Nuit Blanche Brock, a dance installation piece in the fifth floor glass box of Brock’s Earp Residence, which audiences watched from outside the building below. She also served as the writer and story-editor for The Limelighters, a four-part documentary series for Global Television about Toronto’s Performing Arts Lodge, which won several SMPIA awards including Best Script. Most recently, she collaborated with Montreal-based artist Milutin Gubash, and colleague David Vivian, on a performance installation piece for Rodman Hall entitled “Which Way to the Bastille?”. Her research has been published in Theatre Journal; Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism; Janushead: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts; New Canadian Realisms; Codifying the National Self; Canadian Theatre Review; and Maisonneuve.

Research Interests:Performance theorycontemporary performanceperformativity in simulations and reenactment cultureperformativity and illnessLatina/o-Canadian theatre and performanceNew York avant-garde and experimental performance, 1960s to the present nostalgia and memory in performance